I'm alive!

I haven't posted here in forever, but brief update before I return to the Land of the Internets:

-I arrived in Japan safe and sound.

-Elsa made it through the flight/customs no problem, and adjusted just about immediately. Our vet here is on the corner and speaks great English, as she's married to a staff sergeant on Kadena.

-My Japanese in-laws are pretty great. And really like me a lot. It's awesome and weird at the same time. I have a set of twin two-year-old second cousins named Nanami and Manami and they are just about the cutest things I have ever seen.

-Japan is a strange, strange country. And I think I really, genuinely like it here.

I've made a few posts to the Japan Blog, and have a backlog of updates that I can get to now that my adjustment period is bit more stable.

But for now, I'm alive.

Woodland creatures tea skirt!

Worn a couple of different ways. =)

I wanted a nice, long tea skirt. I also wanted to work with Japanese fabrics. I thought "Let's go to a place that sells fabric, maybe they'll have some interesting prints."

HOLY. CRAP.

Not only do they have prints, they have prints, man! And of every color and thing you can imagine. Tons and tons of flower patterns. Color blocks. And the colors here are intense, like looked-directly-at-the-sun-for-a-second-now-visible-spectrum-all-screwy intense. Especially red, gold, and pink. Those are the big guys.

Anyway, the place I went (a department store in a mall, except they don't have walls in the shopping centers here, just a bunch of stores out in the open on each floor and it's super neat) was cool enough to put little maps on the price tags of each section, telling you which region the fabric came from. Some from Hokkaido, some from Aomori, and a bunch of traditional Okinawan fabrics (which are really goddamn bright, let me tell you). And of course, cartoonishly bright novelty prints. Just try to stop me from making a bright yellow Power Rangers party dress once I get a pattern.

But I fell in love with this super bizarre linen-y blend that was patterned with deer, birds, rabbits, squirrels, etc. and grabbed a couple yards. It's so light! And I grabbed a polyester shell fabric because, since it's so light, it's just the teeeeniest bit see-through. And I love me some colorful underwear.

I heavily modified a beginner-friendly skirt pattern that _dragonwolf_ had made a red silk dupioni from as well as my own earlier quick version to see how the pattern suited me. I made some heavy modifications: added pockets, made the waistband thicker, used loose pleating instead of gathers, shifted it down to hip-hugger, added liner, made it tea-length. Made the pattern from scratch - my body don't fit nobody's sizes.

If you'd like to make your own, I highly recommend either following along with _dragonwolf_'s posts on the subject or using the original pattern! I did take a few pictures along my process (labeled!) that give you a better view of the print and what I did. =)

Please excuse my ugly stitching. It's functional, I swear.

( WOODLAND. CREATURES. )

I always hated how polyester and satin pucker with stitching, so I just hemmed the lining with the super-efficient Japanese version of Stitch Witchery, which works/looks great.

So yes, it is incredibly comfortable and I'm super in love with it. It took me a couple hours, hand-stitching everything, shopping time not included.

Feel free to ping me about my methods, how-tos, whatever! I'm happy to share. =)

Moral of the story: POCKETS IN EVERYTHING